Fastener carrier assemblies for securing rows of fasteners in a driving tool such as a nail gun are known, as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,394,268. This patent discloses a single strip of interconnected collar members disposed upon a plurality of fasteners within a driving gun. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,931,622, fasteners are maintained in position by a single strip of carrier sleeves that include breakable portions which detach from the fasteners as each fastener is driven into a workpiece. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,340, a single strip of fastener sleeves includes an annular portion formed with a breakable portion. The annular portion is intended for being kept with the fastener after it has been driven into a workpiece and the breakable portion is intended for removal from the annular portion after the fastener has been driven into the workpiece.
It would be desirable to have a fastener carrier assembly that includes a first, frangible carrier portion which collates a plurality of fasteners and a second carrier portion that stays with the fastener after it has been driven into a workpiece, but which reliably maintains its structural integrity after the fastener has been driven into a workpiece and/or which may be fashioned in various ways, such as a washer and/or structural damper, without imposing design constraints on the first carrier portion. It would also be desirable to have a carrier assembly that allows one to replace a second part of a carrier strip intended to stay with a fastener with a different second part that is better suited for a particular application, without affecting or causing to replace or re-design a first frangible carrier strip that collates the fasteners. It would further be desirable that such a generally two-piece carrier assembly would be cost-efficient to manufacture and capable of providing all of the collating functions necessary for proper functioning in standard driving tools, but without compromising the aforementioned attributes relating to a two-piece design.